The most powerful feeling in the world…

“Fear is the static that prevents me from hearing myself” Samuel Butler

I have been thinking for some time now to write about what I come to perceive as one of the most powerful and influent of the human feelings. About a feeling that governs over all other feelings and decisions in our lives and that never actually leaves our side. That feeling is “fear”.

See, I am currently moving for the second time to a new country, new job, new life…

What makes me do this? Based on the motto “if something isn’t broken why fix it?” why would I ever want to put myself through the pain of starting over from scratch with no basis, no orientation, no friends in a new city that happens to be a lot more chaotic and tough than the one I am currently living in?

I do it because I have learned that the one thing that truly keeps me safe is expansion. Nothings stays the same, everything is continuously changing no matter how much we might want to think that we have it under control, that we are safe, that we can keep ourselves from pain… We cannot avoid it! What we can do to make it easier on ourselves is to create and accept change for ourselves and keep transforming together with it.

But this is not what we usually want to do! This is not what I usually do either! What we, human beings, do is try to resist change and try to block it as much as it is in our power. We drive through life always with the break on, using caution as our shield, fear as our protection…

The never-ending chain of fear

The popular saying claims that “love conquers all” but, in my opinion, it is actually “fear” that has a lot more power in our lives. Fear is the one thing that accompanies us throughout our life and never leaves our side.

…We fear the new, we fear the different and most of all we fear each-other.

…We are cautious, we show only parts of ourselves, we mistrust each-other… so much that we end up hurting one-another just so that we can feel that we are protected .

…We give up way before trying. We hide our deepest wishes, so well that we ourselves do not recognize them anymore.

…We end up seeing faults in all that is around us, not realizing that is it only the reflection of our own disappointments.

…We fear that others might try to take something away from us, might force us to change, so we end up blocking them out, keeping the “different” as far away from us as possible.

…We desperately try to hang on: hang on to our beliefs, hang on to what the past has thought us and most of all hang on to fear, as fear is the only thing that does not really scare us!

…

Change as the only cure for fear

“To improve is to change. To be perfect is to change often” Winston Churchill

Change and pain are the two things that one cannot avoid in this lifetime and still all our actions are directed at preventing them… In our desperate quest for safety we are actually experiencing the true suffering, we are living half-lives where we renounce our dreams, our loves… ourselves.

Even those of us that seem to be very courageous in many aspects of our lives have at least that one wish, one need, one passion that scared us so much that we had to run away from it, block it , push way back deep, deep into our souls, somewhere where we apparently do not feel it anymore.

The truth is that by doing so – by desperately trying to protect ourselves, to block change in order to keep ourselves safe – we only gain a false sense of security and a shield that keeps us from expanding, from evolving, from truly fearlessly connecting with the others and with our true selves.

I do not believe we have to become reckless and force change against our instinct and our own good. I nevertheless believe that in life we need to recognize the moment when we feel that we are not growing anymore, when we feel that we are repressing our dreams and wishes and most of all when we feel that we are too scared to be who we want to be or who we feel like on the inside.